Memoirs

08Jan

Not Pretty but good enough II

There was no walking down the street to play with some neighbourhood friends and definitely no invitation for friends to come over and play soccer as I did at Oke-Labo. Our movements were fairly predictable - to school and back, to church or to some families for the occasional birthdays and celebrations for Christmas etc. We were truly ‘ajebota’ kids, protected by solid walls and iron gates.
5 mins read
08Jun

A Thousand and One Incisions

I would get woken up and, looking at the staircase, would see my father with his left hand resting on the rail, his right hand holding his chin with his eyes looking at me from the distance. His look was intense as if saying “come child”. A few times I had woken up those sleeping next to me, pointing at the staircase and shouting “Daddy is here”, but like those with Paul on the road to Damascus, they saw nothing and cautioned me to stop disrupting their sleep.
5 mins read
08May

Not Pretty but good enough

At break time, a pupil went around ringing the brass bell, something that we really looked forward to with excitement. Our excitement was not for the bell but what comes after it, the arrival of the ‘Iya Olounje’. Smartly dressed in deep blue gowns, they come into the different classrooms and set down their food trays right next to the blackboard. As she opens the food, the scintillating aroma fills the classroom and not a few of us would start salivating. Our food containers which we had deposited at the start of the day would be taken by the woman and filled with whatever food was for the day
7 mins read
30Dec

Had I flinched, when I should have scurried…

I narrowly escaped being killed, in the hands of the same uniformed men that had killed Dele Udoh 4 years earlier. With death, there usually is no premonition and I had none on this fateful day. I was walking on the pedestrian walkway by the side of the big car park opposite the CBN but adjacent to Cocoa House.
9 mins read
10Dec

APATA GANGA

I arrive Apata Ganga out of rebellion, a rebellion against a career path that would have seen me become a teacher. My father was a teacher and so is my mum. My half-brother is a teacher and my Uncle as well. I am totally convinced that the Bakare’s have paid their dues to teaching and I feel a need to fashion a different path, one that I have no clue on where to start. Accountancy it is going to be but how do I become one?
6 mins read
24Apr

Shaken, Not Stirred

I was shaken, not stirred. If I had succumbed to being stirred, I probably would have ended up as an omo eleran (meat seller) or running relay races in traffic to sell bread and cold drinks. Grateful for extraordinary coincidences that took me out of the miry clay.
13 mins read